[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein the C-ionist*

  • From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: 08 Apr 2004 12:04:42 PDT

Donal says that he offers 'some evidence from, and comments on, the
[Philosophical Investigations] as to 'whether [Wittgenstein] is offering a
criterion philosophy of sense and nonsense where we can see at work a variant of
the idea that a concept with no criteria for its application is vacuous.' 

The notion of a criterion is introduced into Wittgenstein's philosophy in the
Blue Book (1933-34) where it is contrasted 'symptom.' The closest he comes
_anywhere_ to giving anything like a definition of 'criteria,' and 'criterion,'
is in the following passage.

'Let us introduce two antithetical terms to avoid certain elementary confusions:
to the question "How do you know that so-and-so is the case?", we sometimes
answer by giving '_criteria_' and sometimes by giving '_symptoms_.' If medical
science calls angina an inflammation caused by a particular bacillus, and we ask
in a particular case "why do you say this man has got angina?" then the answer
"I have found the bacillus...in his blood" gives us the criterion, or what we
might call the defining criterion of angina. If on the other hand the answer
was, "His throat is inflamed," this might give us a symptom of angina. I call
"symptom" a phenomenon of which [sic] experience has taught us that it
coincided, in some way or other, with the phenomenon which is our defining
criterion. Then to say "A man has angina if this bacillus is found in him" is a
tautology or it is a loose way of stating the definition of "angina." But to
say, "A man has angina whenever he has an inflamed throat" is to make a
hypothesis.' [Blue book, pp. 24-25]

He then gives an account of what role these notions play in our actual use of
language:

'In practice, if you were asked which phenomenon is the defining criterion and
which is a symptom, you would in most cases be unable to answer this question
except by making an arbitrary decision _ad hoc_. It may be practical to define a
word by taking one phenomenon as the defining criterion, but we shall easily be
persuaded to define the word by means of what, according to our first use, was a
symptom. Doctors will use the names of diseases without ever deciding which
phenomena are to be taken as criteria and which as symptoms; and this need not
be a deplorable lack of clarity. For remember that in general we don't use
language according to strict rules--it hasn't been taught us by means of strict
rules, either. _We_, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare
language with a calculus proceeding according to exact rules.

'This is a very one-sided way of looking at language. In practice we very rarely
use language as such a calculus. For not only do we not think of the rules of
usage--of definitions, etc.--while using language, but when we are asked to give
such rules, in most cases we aren't able to do so. We are unable clearly to
circumscribe the concepts we use; not because we don't know their real
definitions, but because there is no real 'definition' to them. To suppose that
there _must_ be would be like supposing that whenever children play with a ball
they play a game according to strict rules.' [Blue Book, p. 25]

Let me try to forestal a Donal-like objection: The Blue Book not only
anticipates the more polished Investigations; it contains _everything_ that the
later work contains (except for a detailed account of language games, and an
appeal to 'forms of life'), and nothing of substance in it is taken back in the
Investigations. Moreover, what is here said about criteria is (to repeat) the
most thorough account of the use he makes of this notion in the later writings.
To say that Wittgenstein offers a 'criterion philosophy' is absurd, if by that
is meant that 'criterion' and 'criteria' are for him technical, or
near-technical terms, whose employment is somehow essential to his project. To
say that something is in need of a criterion is just to say that there must be
something open to view, about which we can agree, in order to determine whether
something has been done or whether, as in the example above, some state of
affairs obtains. _Criteria for 'sense' vs. 'nonsense' are never mentioned, let
alone employed_.

These words have no special link to concepts, nor is there any argument that if
there is no criterion for something's having been done, that we are somehow
faced with nonsense. Nonsense arises when expressions which have a use in one
language game are illicitly (perhaps unthinkingly) transferred to and used in
settings in which they do not make sense: that something makes sense here, in
certain circumstances, does not entail that it makes sense always and in every
circumstance. What we're faced with in the absence of criteria is the
_inability_ to make a determination, and in such a case, the best course is to
_reject the possibility_ that things must stand one way or another.`

'It is as if you were to say: "You surely know what 'It's five o'clock on the
sun' means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here
when it is five o'clock."--The explanation by means of _identity_ here does not
work here. For I know well enough that one can call 5 o'clock here and five
o'clock there "the same time", but what I do not know is in what cases one is to
speak of its being the same time here and there.' [Investigations, Section 350]

'...philosophical problems occur when language _goes on holiday_. [Sec. 38]

Let me ask Donal for the second or third time where in the later writings he
finds Wittgenstein talking about 'vacuous concepts,' or anything that could be
construed as a rough synonym of that expression--except by way of arguing
_against_ Frege's notion that concepts without sharp boundaries were concepts in
name only.

Let me ask too for a single example anywhere, of 'an unsayable rule.'

Robert Paul
Reed College



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